


The Morning After

by olivieblake



Category: Original Work
Genre: Awkward Family Dinners, Christmas Parties, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Humor, One Night Stands, Romance, holiday romance, inspired by 'all I want for christmas is you', thank you queen mariah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27983175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivieblake/pseuds/olivieblake
Summary: “You two are so cute together,” the waitress informs them.“Thanks,” says Daisy, “we’re divorced.”“She needs a kidney,” adds Ben.“Oh,” says the waitress, backing away.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 72
Kudos: 200
Collections: A Little Light Pining





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> Happy holidays!
> 
> 1\. This is my contribution to this year's Collabor-Advent, a gift I have given to myself and which you can also enjoy as a treat: **A Little Light Pining** , a collection of short holiday romances that are designed to make you feel like maybe things will be okay in the world someday.
> 
> 2\. IMMENSE amounts of adoration to Colubrina, cocoartist, & provocative envy for joining me on this endeavor to fill you with holiday spirit, which in this case is not a euphemism. But hopefully very satisfying all the same.
> 
> 3\. This story is inspired by "All I Want For Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey and also the 2020!emo-ified version by Point North. The trope is "please do not embarrass me at my family dinner haha jk unless...?" which is a holiday staple, probably.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The word for stupid in Tagalog is “tanga,” emphasis on the _nga_ , which to Daisy Torres’s 99.7% English-speaking ear is foreignly percussive, like a fly swatter finding its mark. Currently she’s hearing it in her grandmother’s voice, which is not ideal. Given the choice she’d gladly unsubscribe from hearing Lola in her head at all, particularly since half the plausible options are nonsensical and the other half are curses. Not curses like swear words, which Lola would never use. Curses like actual blood curses. Tangentially, Lola has a ghost living in her condo and two mysteriously dead ex-husbands. Anyway, that isn’t the point. Ha ha! Everything’s fine.

Daisy flips restlessly onto her side and stares at him. Ben. Benjamin, presumably. Probably. Or is it? Does he have a middle name? She doesn’t even know. Isn’t it bizarre to know that a boy can sleep peacefully through the night in someone else’s bed (truly, the serenity of the white man knows no bounds; look at Daisy’s absconded father, who probably sleeps like a corpse) without having the faintest idea what his middle name is? 

Last night’s Pine House party is… a little foggy, she admits. And it was meant to be so straightforward! Just caroling with the Mistletones and then straight home for some much-deserved sleep after the wretchedness of finals. Being an Arbor Scholar and therefore beholden to the goodwill of the moneyed trustees, Daisy isn’t usually spontaneous when the alternative is good (or at least good-resembling) behavior. True, she remembers her solo going acceptably well and persuading Emma to have a drink with her out of pure, unadulterated relief—which, okay, was a little because she’s bailing on Emma’s gift-wrapping thing to fly home first thing tomorrow, but honestly, who can be as philanthropic as Emma? Transversely, if _Emma_ was having a drink at the party it couldn’t be _bad_ —but aside from nearly dumping her beer on some kid with Hockey Santa on his sweater, the rest seems like a grossly festive fever dream. Was there… a KFC yule log? Daisy half-recalls hearing a story about the girl from _High School Musical_ , or maybe it was just literally a high school musical. 

And okay, fine. She does remember spotting Ben.

Middle name notwithstanding, Ben’s obvious appeal is that he’s very, you know. He’s… let’s just say he’s not bad to look at, even wearing that truly hideous sweater complete with Christmas tree that actually lights up. (Daisy recalls, briefly, that he showed her the battery pack where it rested against his lacrosse-playing chest before she got distracted by the rest of the view.) A few games of beer pong, some celebratory shots… so the story always goes. But with that much mistletoe draping irresponsibly from every corner, could she really be blamed for getting carried away? Take the stress of finals and mix it with Ben’s face (and abs) and it’s kind of an easy math equation. 

Besides, it’s not as if she didn’t have fun, which is certainly one word for last night. The odds of an orgasm the first time she sleeps with anyone are astronomically implausible—and yet. Oh god, was she terribly loud in bed? Daisy unhelpfully recalls the bit of filth she tried to purr in his ear whilst toppling inebriatedly sideways and suffers a sudden, ferocious mortification. _Stop_ , she pleads with her brain, and accidentally sighs aloud much more heavily than she intended to.

Ben, thusly awoken, cracks one eye.

“Uh oh,” he comments, half his face still pressed into the pillow. _Her_ pillow. Not that she’s some kind of pillow-Scrooge—but it’s _weird_ , isn’t it? Her mother bought her that pillow thinking she’d be studying and sleeping and NOTHING ELSE and now here Ben is, a boy Daisy barely knows, sleeping on it. Or not sleeping, as it were.

Daisy blinks, distracted by temporary filial guilt. “Sorry, what?”

“By the look on your face I’ve already disappointed you,” he says. 

“What? No. Not—don’t be? Ha,” she manages incoherently, since disappointing her is perhaps the one thing he did _not_ do. “I was just… thinking.” 

“Yeah?” He turns to face her and hell on earth, he looks exquisitely tousled. Meanwhile there’s probably mascara raccooning on her face, or drool. “What’s on your mind?” Ben asks, while she hovers between anxiety about her morning breath and irrational distress about her mom.

Okay, so they had sex. So what? She’s slept with people casually before, though she usually lets things take longer than two drunken hours to build. Either way, she’s flying back home tomorrow morning and they obviously aren’t going to speak again, so now they can slip into cordial estrangement and disappear from each other’s lives—as soon as she answers the damn question. 

“Just that the morning after is always awkward,” Daisy finally says. “Which of us is going to pretend we have to be somewhere? Probably me, since it’s my room, so I’ll have to tell you that I have some sort of pressingly urgent thing to do and we’ll force small talk while you get dressed—” She glances down at his Christmas sweater (currently draped on the floor beside her Normal Girl Underwear) and feels her cheeks heat again at the blurry memory of depositing them there. “And anyway, you’ll tell me you’ll call,” she forcefully continues, “even though you know you won’t, and I’ll say okay great even though I _also_ know you won’t, and I’ll say it was fun and you’ll agree and then you’ll leave and I’ll stay here because obviously I lied to you about having anywhere to be because it’s eight in the morning and nobody in their right mind would have anywhere to be at this time on a Saturday—”

“Well, we _could_ do all that,” Ben says noncommittally, “but there’s a loophole, I think, that might allow us to skip it.”

“What?” 

“Well, you’re assuming the night’s already over, aren’t you?”

“It’s… day,” points out Daisy slowly, gesturing to the light leaking in around the blinds.

Ben laughs, and okay, it’s possible she’d already noticed last night that he had that laugh, rich and transformative of an otherwise Very Cool face. “What I’m trying to say,” he clarifies, “is that we can at least be friends, can’t we? I’ve got nothing going on today, so if you’re not busy, let’s hang out.”

“You want to hang out,” Daisy repeats doubtfully.

“I want to _keep_ hanging out,” Ben corrects her. “The operative mechanism here is the ongoing nature of the thing.”

“So just… a friendly hang?” With someone she knows next to nothing about, abs aside.

“Why not?” Ben counters, shrugging. “Saves us the usual song-and-dance, and anyway I’m starving. You hungry?”

Daisy considers it. It’s an odd suggestion, though she doesn’t always mind oddness. Livens up the place, in her mind. And how long could breakfast possibly take? Objectively speaking, it’s no dumber than anything she’s already done.

“Alright,” Daisy says, “let’s hang.”

* * *

“What’s your middle name?” Daisy asks while cutting into her blueberry ricotta pancakes, and Benjamin Cole, normally very proficient at not dying, promptly chokes. “Oh my god,” she gasps, brown eyes blowing wide as Ben doubles over on his heretofore marvelously adequate breakfast hash. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m—” He coughs, clearing the malignant bit of potato from his throat. “Yeah, just… wrong pipe,” he manages to clarify, feeling like an absolute clown. “Sorry, what did you say?” 

“Your middle name,” she repeats with a quizzical look of concern.

“Oh, right. It’s, um—” He could lie? But he’s woefully slow on his feet when it comes to lies. Ben’s never really been easy in that way, with the charming nonchalance his brother Nathaniel has about their background. But then again, it’s no secret that Ben’s not Nathaniel. 

“It’s Van der Luyden,” Ben finally answers, clearing his throat again. 

“What? That’s so random,” Daisy declares, laughing to herself and taking another bite of pancake. “What is that, Dutch?”

“Yeah.” Interesting. “It’s my mother’s maiden name.”

“Oh, huh. Weird.” She smiles at him blankly, so she definitely doesn’t recognize the name. Like, at all. She has no idea who the Van der Luydens are—apparently has no guesses as to who the Coles are, either, assuming she remembers his surname to begin with—and for a blissful moment, Ben relaxes. 

“What’s yours?” 

“Elizabeth.” Daisy rolls her eyes. “Whose middle name is _not_ Elizabeth, I ask? At this point it’s just filler. Want some pancakes?” she offers tangentially, and he smiles. She’s often interrupting herself, which does a funny little thing to her brow, crinkling it with thought. She’d caught his eye last night while glittering under the Pine party’s strobe lights like a cheery hallucination, but she’s no less charming in her practical winter knits. 

They most likely look ridiculous together at the moment, considering he’s still in the heinous sweatshirt Chase bought him two years ago as a joke. He’s never had thoughts on it before, though today he’s feeling reasonably fond.

“Sure. Want to swap?” he suggests, gesturing to his skillet.

“Oh, absolutely _yes_ ,” Daisy confirms, reaching across the table before he even manages to fully laugh. “I always think breakfast should have both a sweet and a savory,” she explains, “and I like my textures diverse.”

“So why don’t you order both?” He hopes he looks teasingly debonair instead of blandly accusatory.

“Oh my god, you’re such a boy. I can’t order _both_ ,” she informs him, waving her fork around to invoke what he assumes to be the patriarchy. “At home my family and I always share,” she adds, digging into his skillet while he curates a bite of her pancakes. “Saves me from looking like some kind of gluttonous French king when I can just take bites from other people’s food.”

Ben chews with his usual fastidiousness before asking, “Do you have a lot of siblings?”

“No, I’m an illegitimate love child,” she says without expression, and Ben chokes again, to which she offers a halfway smug look of conspiracy. “But I’ve got like a hundred cousins or something. Roughly. Give or take.”

“Oh, so a reasonable amount.” He likes it, the image of her surrounded on all sides by fellow members of her flock, all of them sharing a texturally diverse breakfast.

“Yeah, totally.” She smiles. “What about you?”

“Just one brother, older. I was an accident.” Presumably, since there’s no alternate explanation for why his parents would choose to have another son six years later when Nathaniel’s practically perfect in every way. But that isn’t a very compelling thing to say aloud, and he hopes she finds him even fractionally as interesting as he finds her.

“Oh good, so we have that in common.” She flashes him a guileful look and takes another bite of skillet, swapping back to their original orders. “How are the pancakes?”

He can hardly taste them. “They’re great. I think you had the better order.”

“I thought the same thing. Want more?” she offers, and Ben thinks, briefly, about what his father would say in that situation. _Benjamin, if this was what you wanted to eat you should have ordered it yourself._ His mother would say something like _Benji, honey, are you sure you won’t consider doing keto? You know starches are terrible for the skin._ Nathaniel would most likely be absent; busy with friends or, you know, perennial success. Which isn’t to say Ben doesn’t like Nat, of course. He just isn’t sure Nat likes him.

“To the victor the spoils,” Ben says of Daisy’s pancakes, and she gallantly bows in thanks. “Are you going home for the holidays?” He vaguely remembers mentions of California before a sunken final cup in last night’s game of beer pong, though the celebratory kiss that follows (and leads him to her bed) is understandably much clearer.

“Yeah, my flight’s tomorrow.” She drifts away for a second, wistful. “It’s a lot of noise, basically—my mom and her sisters gossiping at the top of their lungs while my uncles shout about football and my cousins scream obscene answers to Cards Against Humanity while my grandma yells for them to stop. It’s a belligerent hellscape, basically,” she says fondly, adding, “What about you?”

“Oh, ours is hellish with decency. So polite you might even think it’s all very appropriate and normal, but by the time everyone splits off to leave you realize the devil was inside us all along.” 

She laughs, which is a relief since it was only an incidental bit of cleverness, if it was one at all. “Do you have to travel home?”

He hesitates, then remembers she’s completely and almost bizarrely ignorant of his entire situation. “No, my family’s from around here,” he says. “Actually, there’s an awful party I have to attend every year.” The dreaded Advent Gala, which he can’t say aloud without shuddering.

“More awful than politely hellish Christmas?”

“Oh, much more. It’s a lot of talking about the weather with my dad’s—” Donors, partners, associates… damn it, what was the normal word? “Coworkers,” Ben manages. 

“How’s the food?” Daisy asks.

“Criminally festive,” he replies, much to her apparent joy. “Carnivalesque.”

“Oh, I can picture it now and frankly, I love it. Though in fairness, I do always enjoy a nice venture into white people Christmas food,” she says. “The Filipino stuff my grandma makes sometimes involves a lot of questions. Like, for example, what exactly is this? And so on.”

“But that’s exciting. Mystery! Intrigue! Et cetera.” Ben can hardly believe how pleasant he’s being, but it’s relatively easy with Daisy.

“A little _too_ exciting, maybe? The last time I brought someone home things were a little touch and go. Not to mention they asked my mom for soy sauce to put on the rice,” she adds with a helpless grimace.

“Is that bad?” Ben asks.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Daisy assures him as the waitress brings them the check.

“You two are so cute together,” the waitress informs them.

“Thanks,” says Daisy, “we’re divorced.”

“She needs a kidney,” adds Ben.

“Oh,” says the waitress, backing away as Daisy stifles a laugh.

“You certainly took that to a dark place, didn’t you?” she whispers loudly to Ben.

“I have a knack for morbidity,” he replies with a shrug. His mother calls his sense of humor ‘so gruesome, Benji, don’t,’ which is his only real acknowledgement that he has one to begin with. (Only Nathaniel makes their father laugh.)

“Apparently so.” Daisy’s still smiling, which Ben realizes makes him feel something odd. A certain goodness, or lack of ineptitude. It’s nice.

“So,” she says, glancing at the bill. “How much do I owe?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He waves her away. “Do you bring people home often?”

“Oh come on, we can split it halfway. And no, I don’t usually—because again, noise-ridden hellscape,” she clarifies, and he nods, “but Rachel was sort of a special case. Mostly because, well.” She shrugs. “I never really bothered to explain it. Shameful maybe, but my grandmother has definitely faked heart attacks over less.”

Ben, who’s been primarily focused on sliding his Black Card surreptitiously into the billfold containing the check, pauses at that. “Rachel?”

“Yeah.” Daisy holds her debit card out with two fingers, considering him. “I thought for sure I’d already mentioned it. You’re not going to be weird about that, are you?”

God, he hopes not. “No, not weird. Just curious.” 

“We went out for like, six months sophomore year. Seems like forever ago now.” Daisy nudges her card at him again. “Come on, don’t be one of those guys who has to pay or his masculinity crumbles. Let’s split it, okay?”

She probably wouldn’t push it if she knew who he was, but so be it. “Alright, fine by me,” he agrees, setting the bill at the edge of the table. “So what next?”

“Next?” She blinks at him. My, my, he thinks, how the turntables.

“The night’s still young,” he reminds her, gesturing to the fluffy blanket of white coating the campus trails outside. “How about a hike?”

“A hike,” Daisy echoes, arching a brow. “You want to go for a hike right now? In this?”

In fairness it’s not his best idea, but it is _an_ idea, and that should probably count for something. “Yes,” he confirms, hoping for the pure, cosmological convergence of her not wanting to end things as badly as he doesn’t want her to. “But aren’t we young and foolish?”

She cuts him a smile that catches them both by surprise. It’s been a while since he asked for anything for Christmas, but this… sort of seems like the one.

“I suppose we are,” she agrees, their feet arranging like puzzle pieces as they both slide down in their booths.

* * *

It’s more of a trudge than a hike, Daisy thinks. The sound of their footsteps through snow is a definite trudge, with maybe the occasional crunch as they traverse the path from the diner through the wintry snowfall at the outskirts of campus. 

“I like to think of winter as the great equalizer,” Daisy says, apropos of nothing (apropos of staring at her boots, which were a gift from slightly paranoid Lola; the sort that squeak loudly in the halls). “Nobody looks cute in winter clothes,” she explains, gesturing pointedly to Ben’s enormous silver puffer coat. “This sort of cold humbles us as a society.”

“I’ll have you know this is couture,” Ben jokes. 

“It’s very shiny,” Daisy agrees, “which is close enough.” Underneath he’s still wearing the hideous sweater from last night’s party, apparently unconcerned with how ridiculous he looks. She envies that sort of nonchalance and wonders where it comes from. Probably penis possession.

“What’s it like back home?” he asks, and she sighs theatrically.

“Well, it never really stays much below fifty or so, which means that fashion’s still technically in play,” she says, thinking of the soft camel coats and buttery chelsea boots she would have killed to wear in high school; the standard Cool Girl uniforms of cashmere sweaters tucked into high-waisted skirts. “The really fashionable ones just freeze a bit,” she adds, “I assume to add to the aesthetic.”

“It gets that cold in California?”

“I’m sure it doesn’t in other places. But I’m from San Francisco, not L.A. or something.”

“Really?” He brightens. “I love San Francisco.”

“Well… not exactly there,” Daisy admits, flushing a little, because people at Arbor are generally cultured and traveled whereas her usual activities prior to college involved being at home and staying there. “I’m from a bit inland. Near Berkeley?”

“That’s where my brother went to school,” Ben says. 

“You haven’t said much about him. What’s he like?”

“Oh, you know. Funny, good-looking, smart. Generally beloved.” Ben cuts her a thin smile and Daisy has the sense he doesn’t want to discuss it further. Figures, she thinks with an internal sigh, that she’s managed to stumble (trudge) onto the one topic he’s totally uninterested in pursuing.

“Right or left?” Ben says, pausing where the path around the lake veers off and upwards, ascending a shallow ridge. 

“I’ve never actually been up there,” Daisy says, gesturing to the hill that serves as the highest point on campus. 

“Really?” Ben looks shocked. “Never?”

“What would I go up there for?”

“To be up high, obviously. Come on, we’re going,” he says, directing her to the right and selecting what is unquestionably the longer route. Privately she’s a little pleased he’s not in a hurry to rush off after breakfast, though she’s also a little cold and moderately paranoid about, you know, nature. Generally speaking she’s more of an indoor cat.

“What if we get stranded and die?” 

“We won’t get stranded _or_ die,” Ben assures her. “I’ve been up here hundreds of times. It’s barely half a mile.”

Ha! “Ask me the last time I hiked half a mile.”

“Doesn’t matter. You will today.”

“Why?”

“Better question. Why not?”

“Bugs,” says Daisy. 

“Not sure that’s an issue right now,” Ben assures her, and for the first time since they left the diner, conversation seems easy again, and not at all the stilted small talk between two strangers who slept together last night.

Unfortunately, it’s short-lived. “Oi, King Cole,” shouts someone from the base of the ridge, approaching from the opposite direction. There’s a crowd of four boys, one of them in a Sigma beanie. “What’s this about a party over at the castle?”

Daisy watches Ben’s jaw tense for a moment, though he replies with an offhanded, “It’s invite-only, Walsh.”

“Ouch.” The frat bro feigns a stab to the heart, then grins. “Come on, I gotta lock down that internship. What’s it gonna take?”

“Probably at least a 2.5,” Ben calls back, which Daisy hopes is a joke. She exhales and Ben glances at her, then turns back to the ridge. “Look, I’m not sure I’m going,” he adds, and the rest of the lads piece this together with Daisy’s existence, making a collection of lewd boy-noises like a flock of randy pigeons. “Get your uncle to call in a favor, Walsh. Isn’t that how it usually goes?”

This time the boys make hooting noises at each other, like this is an old joke. “Aye aye, captain,” says the frat bro with an exaggerated wink in Daisy’s direction, though thankfully Ben is walking again.

No, trudging. They’re back to trudging.

“Sorry about that,” Ben says after a minute.

“For what?” Daisy says lightly.

“That I failed to introduce you as my wife of thirty years,” he replies, “though in fairness, the audience wasn’t up to par. Walsh’s dad was a Sig,” he adds. “And an Elm.” Meaning Elm House, which is about as notorious for its Supreme Court Clerkships and Forbes 30-Under-30s as Ash House is for its devotion to bacchanalia.

Daisy sometimes imagines the concept of having a legacy. Her conditions for an Arbor degree are obvious—outstanding extracurriculars, perfect grades, slavish gratitude to the school’s massive endowment—but unlike the singularity of Elm House Sigma Legacy Walsh, Daisy knows she’s just a revolving door. She’s the pet project this school needs to sell itself as a champion of diversity, and when she’s gone they’ll just fill her place with someone else.

Occasionally it strikes her as a distant, ephemeral sort of dream, the idea of being Arbor nobility in a way. She imagines walking up to some landmark and saying oh yes, Papá says that in his day the statues were made entirely of gold. But then she remembers she’s actually useful to the world, which is semi-reassuring.

“I’m more of a Pine man myself,” Daisy finally says, smoking an invisible pipe and adding an invisible beard-stroke for Dramatics. Ben laughs, and the sound is loud enough to startle geese. “But you’re not actually going to skip your family’s holiday party, are you?” she asks, in her own voice this time.

“I’m just so busy at the moment,” he says. “Proving a point.”

“About what?”

“About why this is worth doing, for one thing.” The trees along the ridge are thick and snowy, and down below the campus is gradually coming into view. The church steeple is a singular landmark amid a blanket of white, and it feels like they’re alone above everything, wandering an eternal emptiness of space.

“We definitely could have experienced this view from the top of one of the parking garages,” Daisy says, but she does see his point. The view of the lake is a little breathtaking, and not exclusively because she’s already winded. She pauses, shading her eyes a little against the reflectiveness of grey sky on snow. It’s sort of all-consumingly lovely, she admits.

She sneaks a look at Ben, and he catches her.

“I was standing right here when I decided to go to Arbor,” he says.

“Yeah?” 

“I wasn’t really sure it was the place for me. I mean, my parents wanted me to go,” he says with a sidelong glance, “because it’s Arbor—”

“Understood.” For Daisy’s family, her acceptance was a free pass to a benevolent future; the first step toward the American Dream, which doesn’t come so easily when you're born half a world away, like Lola. The wrong half of the world, at that.

“I actually came to Arbor for the first time when my brother was considering it,” Ben says, expressionless. “He was arguing with my parents during his campus interview, so I came and stood up here. It wasn’t snowing then—it was spring and gloomy as shit, honestly—but I just felt… like I was at peace for a second, I guess.” He tucks his hands into his pockets, folding up like a paper crane. “Which I couldn’t really remember feeling before.”

“I get that.” She imagines a younger Ben; tries not to go too soft. “I mean, hypothetically. I can’t say I’ve ever really felt completely at peace. There’s too many parts of me that don’t fit.”

“What?” Ben turns to her with surprise. “How is that possible?”

“Oh, come on,” she scoffs. “I’m here on scholarship. I don’t have the money my friends do. Plus people here always ask ‘what’ I am like I’m some kind of mutant. And with the sexuality thing—”

“People don’t actually give you shit for that, do they?”

“The last girl I was with, the one I told you about? I wasn’t gay enough for her. But I’m also not straight enough for most boys. Either that or it’s just, like, something else for them to sexualize. Like a kink or something.” Daisy blinks. “Sorry, I… didn’t mean to just steamroll your story, I’m not complaining, I’m just—”

“Believe me,” Ben says, glancing at her. “I don’t mind.”

It’s occurring to Daisy that she hadn’t known before she slept with him that Ben was careful and thoughtful and quiet in an attentive way, but now it kind of means something to her. Maybe there’s something to the theory of not ending the night quite yet. Maybe she actually _does_ want him to call, which is terrible news. Not exclusively because it seems a little late to admit that now.

“So,” she tells him, forcing levity. “What next?”

“Really?” He looks surprised. “After this herculean effort, you’re still up for more?”

She gives him a shove that’s more of a bounce between coats. “Night’s still young, isn’t it?”

“Well, it gives me an excuse to get out of the party,” he agrees. “So what should we do, watch a movie? Turtle race? Road trip to the Grand Canyon?”

“Wait,” Daisy registers belatedly. “That party’s _tonight_? Oh no, mister. No way am I your excuse for missing family,” she says firmly. “You’re going. You have to.”

“But then we’ve still got to do the awkward one night stand thing,” Ben reminds her. “Unless you want to come with me, that is.”

A repugnant bit of pleasure takes root in Daisy’s chest. “I think there’s probably a few middle stages between having sex and meeting your whole family, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t have to be a big deal. We can make up one of our classic backstories.”

“The kidney plot seems macabre for a holiday party.”

He shrugs. “So we’ll improvise. Got anything better to do tonight?”

"Not when you put it that way."

He looks at her, and she at him. Strangely enough, she really does want to know him. It’s hard to believe he’s still mostly a stranger now that he’s seen the creepy-crawly grossness of her insides. 

_And_ her outsides, of course. Naked. Which they seem to mutually recall at the exact same moment, because both their cheeks flush with a mix of sheepishness and cold.

“Well. Shall we?” says Ben, and for fuck’s sake, even his gloved hand resting on the small of her back for the tiniest instant is something like a miracle before they turn to walk together down the ridge.

* * *

Ben’s initially concerned that Daisy might find his family’s country estate repellant. Or be overwhelmed by the sheer obscenity of its generational wealth. Or possibly resent him for taking her there without sufficient warning that actually, _his_ father’s a Pine and a Sig to boot. It’s strange and claustrophobic to know she’s ignorant of everything he comes with; for example, Daisy has no idea there’s a better version of Ben out there named Nathaniel who’s probably much more to her liking, more interesting and more outgoing and not at all like Ben, who’s never technically done anything that wasn’t sanctioned by Mommy or Daddy or both. 

He feels more aware than ever of the disparity between them, just like he felt when he caught her frowning disapprovingly at Walsh. It’s a mix of things, his own bloated privilege and her obvious discomfort. Her knee-length dress is pretty and tasteful but it’s not an elaborate gown like his mother’s, and to make things worse, his father won’t stop bringing up Nat. 

“If I hear another word from your brother about the company’s ethos I swear to god I’ll spontaneously combust,” mutters Nathaniel Harrington Cole II. “Did you hear he’s begged off for the night, too? Your mother nearly had a conniption when he told her. Probably for the best, really, since the Chinese are sniffing out a new contract and nobody’s got the time for Nat’s speeches—though that sort of burdensome social conscience will go a long way with the fucking progressives. I hate to admit it while he’s riding his high horse of moral superiority, but Nat might be just the game-changer we need,” Ben’s father chuckles to himself, not even acknowledging Ben’s silence before taking notice of Daisy for the first time. “ _If_ we manage not to lose him to the cult of parlor socialism, that is. Anyway, enough shop talk. Mind topping me off? Two fingers of any potable alcohol will do,” he says to Daisy, as Ben cringes so hard he wonders whether he hasn’t disappeared beneath the eighteenth century floorboards. 

Of course his father has mistaken the girl he slept with last night for a member of the catering staff. This is it, Ben thinks. This is when Daisy finally walks out the door. Bye Ben, this has been an abject failure, good luck and watch out for the guillotines.

“I’m actually not a waitress, Mr. Cole,” Daisy says coolly. “I’m Ben’s girlfriend.”

Interesting, Ben thinks.

“Oh, so sorry, my mistake,” says Ben’s father, who’s not nearly as embarrassed as he should be. “Girlfriend, really? He’s never mentioned anyone.”

“It’s very new,” Daisy assures him. “We met at work.” She winks at Ben, which is… worrisome, honestly. Or perhaps exciting. 

“Work?” echoes Ben’s mother, appearing at precisely the wrong time. “Goodness, Benji, don’t tell me you’ve reconsidered your father’s offer?”

Offer, ha. Indentured servitude, more like. The ironclad expectation that Ben will come work for The Firm in some irrelevant position below Nathaniel until he eventually takes up golf. “Mom, I told you, I haven’t decid-”

“Actually,” Daisy cuts in, “we’re dancers.”

Nathaniel II chokes on a sip of his recently acquired glass of champagne and Ben turns quizzically to Daisy, surprised but not unintrigued by wherever that concept is going.

“Dancers?” Ben’s mother echoes. “For… some extracurricular purpose, I suppose?”

“It’s really better if we just show you,” Daisy says, turning to Ben with perfect solemnity. “What do you say, Ben? Care to give us a little taste?”

He can see her fighting a smile and knows she thinks he won’t do it. She’s daring him into something—what that actually is he can’t _begin_ to guess—but part of him knows this is the moment. This is the choice. She’s either going to be the girl who slips into the background of things he’s done and lost or she’s going to be the person who finally knows him, inside and out. 

For the moment, it’s entirely his decision. Which is rare, really. And bliss.

“Excuse me a sec,” Ben says curtly, and wanders away, making a series of decisions that cause his pulse to thunder loudly in his chest.

When he returns, his mother’s carefully selected string quartet has paused their performance and a loud, thudding bass is playing over the speakers in the Cole estate’s reception hall. Ben, by then lacking the lucidity to reconsider his very stupid plan, kicks out a beautifully upholstered chair from beneath a gilded tablecloth, easing a gawking Daisy into it while Ginuwine’s voice begins to play.

“ _I’m just a bachelor, I’m looking for a partner, someone who knows how to ride without even falling off_ —”

Thank god the Sigs won the Panhellenic lip sync competition his pledge year. He knows the choreography backwards and forwards, which hasn’t been taking up any useful space in his brain until this exact moment. A few hip thrusts, some shoulder moves, a little footwork, the deliberate loosening of his tie. He isn’t totally inept.

“ _If you’re horny, let’s do it_ ,” Ben mouths along with the song to Daisy, whose stricken face is flushed with shocked delight. “ _Ride it, my pony—_ ”

“Benjamin!” his mother gasps when he clambers onto Daisy’s lap, tearing open his shirt and gyrating shamelessly until she screams like a teenager.

“For the record, I didn’t think you’d go _this_ far,” she shout-whispers, gleefully running her hands over his torso while he loops his displaced tie around her neck. “Should I tell them I’m bi?”

“If you don’t, I’ll be the one having all the fun.” He flips around for a hedonic series of thrusts while she howls and eggs him on, and he has to admit he’s enjoying himself even while he mortifies his parents into next week. 

Actually, it’s not mutually exclusive as far as enjoyment goes.

“Damn son, you got moves,” gasps Daisy, a sheen of sweat and maniacal laughter on her cheeks.

“Thought you knew that already.” He pulls her from her chair and tugs her close because fuck it, he wants to. He wants to, and he’s finally not play-acting as some alternative Nathaniel Lite. Besides, everyone else here is too drunk on his parents’ Dom Perignon to care.

When Daisy wraps her arms around his neck Ben suddenly remembers that even though sex is sometimes urgent and physical, like last night, it’s also sometimes the comfort of knowing there are actual, for-real miracles in life, like ending up in exactly the right person’s bed. And suddenly, he prefers to brush her hair and write her sonnets than let her think this is a one night stand. 

“I like you,” Ben says, in case it’s not clear. He’s pretty sure it’s best if there are no ambiguities from this point forward.

“I like you too,” she says, and adds, “Unrelated, is there a bed in this mansion somewhere?”

“Fifty four rooms of potential. Plus a library if you’re feeling scholarly.”

“Cool,” says Daisy, already pulling him by the hand. “Let’s hit the books.”

* * *

“Well,” Daisy says, “it’s been fun.”

“I’ll call you,” Ben says.

“God, don’t you hate these awkward goodbyes?”

“If only we could avoid them.”

They smile at each other beneath the departures sign, Daisy’s suitcase in one hand and Ben’s ugly Christmas sweater in the other. He offered her a much nicer collection of garments to choose from but she’s gotten kind of attached to this one. And anyway, she needs something to put on over the dress she’s still wearing from last night.

Ben sends her up the escalator with a kiss and she turns with one last wave, considering what Lola would have to say about all this. In fairness Lola had a lot of suitors, so she really can’t judge. Is there a word in Tagalog for something that’s like fate, but hornier? She’ll have to ask.

Just as she thinks it, her phone rings.

“Sorry,” Ben says when she answers, “too soon? Couldn’t help it.”

Daisy smiles. 

“No problem,” she assures him, clocking the hour wait until boarding. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find the first two stories in the A Little Light Pining collection and stay tuned for next week's collaboradvent conclusion. Thank you for reading!


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